Coming in as part of the Vapor-X series, the biggest change you notice is of course the new cooler. The fan is now centered in the middle of the GPU; other major changes include the more traditional fan style along with a larger diameter which comes in at 92mm.

Around the fan we have a shroud which looks great. We've got some vents and holes which make it look quite mean. The company has also placed stickers over the cooler to let us know the model, brand and what series the card sits in and we've got to say the small design and subtle placement looks great, making the whole card look more classy than anything else.

While the cooler has changed, the overall layout of connectors hasn't. Towards the back of the card we have two 6-Pin PCI-E connectors, while along the top and closer to the front we have our two CrossFire connectors which give us the ability to run up to three HD 5870s together.

The connectivity on the standard HD 5870 is so good that we'll be surprised if anyone changes that side of things. What that means is we have two Dual-Link DVI connectors along with a single HDMI and Display Port. We've also got a little vent that sits next to one of the Dual-Link DVI connectors which will help push the hot air out of the card and system.

Specifications

As we mentioned in the intro, just because the main focus of the Vapor-X is the cooling, it doesn't mean that Sapphire can't take the time to do a little something with the clock speeds as well.

While there isn't anything too amazing here, it's good to see a small bump. What we're seeing is the core gets a small 20MHz bump to 870MHz, while the 1GB of GDDR5 moves from 4800MHz QDR to a more rounded 5000MHz QDR. We're not yet sure what kind of boost this small bump will offer us, but we'll find out soon enough.